


the thread you have to keep finding

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [281]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gardens & Gardening, Gen, Memories of Jem...RIP Jem, Mithrim, POV Outsider, Past Character Death, Tabitha & Miles & Wachiwi are a good squad, Wachiwi is charming, title from a poem by Jean Valentine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:15:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25788691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: “You know a good deal about gardening,” Wachiwi says, peering over her shoulder. Tabitha has a scrap of paper and a stub of charcoal and she is indulging in a little fancy, plotting where to place fruit trees (if they can be acquired) around Mithrim’s outskirts.
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [281]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	the thread you have to keep finding

Tabitha does not complain when Miles and Wachiwi speak in their own tongue. Though Miles is a frequent companion of hers, this new friendship is no insult to their old one. Tabitha is used to languages set apart, anyway. Her brother and she have long communicated in glances more than words. Though Mithrim was a safe haven first, it became a place demanding measured caution, too, in the days of Annatar’s terrorism and Feanor’s proud regime.

Of course, the whole world is like that. Where there is wilderness, there are all the risks of loneliness. Where there are other people, there is both companionship and treachery.

Tabitha has had a distinct consciousness of life’s falsities since childhood, born to a silversmith whose frail body was wracked by consumption. Abe and Tabitha, though small-framed like their father, were healthy. Abe had almost pursued a career in law, but he had been chivied and cast out for abolitionist tendencies—Virginia being no welcoming locale for such beliefs. As Tabitha had never married, she was obliged to follow him when he gave up his humble lodgings there; lodgings she had shared.

West, they wandered.

Friends of Rumil met them en route to Oregon, and redirected their path.

Mithrim is—even now—a friendlier home for women than too many found in both east and west. 

(She still grieves for Jem.)

“You know a good deal about gardening,” Wachiwi says, peering over her shoulder. Tabitha has a scrap of paper and a stub of charcoal and she is indulging in a little fancy, plotting where to place fruit trees (if they can be acquired) around Mithrim’s outskirts.

“One learns,” she concedes. “We save as many seeds as we can from each year’s harvest…sprout potatoes, too, of course, and the like…and Abe contrives to fetch and trade what else we want, in town.”

Wachiwi joins her on the bench, propping her chin on her hands. “It’s been long since I could watch something grow,” she says. “Save cattle.”

“Cattle?”

“The Doriath ranches. Summers there; sometimes winters. Ever since I’ve known Haleth. It’s good work, but it’s no garden.”

Tabitha knows of Doriath; likely everyone in Mithrim does. She, however, has lived here long enough to have heard Rumil speak of _Thingol_.

“You don’t know why?” Abe is surprised, when she raises the subject. They are husking dried corn in the yard. There will be a proper meal tonight; Celegorm and his cousin Aredhel brought back a deer and rabbits.

Abe, despite his sharp stratagems and thinking mind, doesn’t mind sharing in women’s work. When Jem and her young husband were both alive and happy, the four of them would often labor together, trading quilt-pieced stories of uncommon lives. “Why, that’s all Feanor. Man came out, ten years back—afore we were here, you know. Whatever business Rumil and Thingol had between them, the Irishman interrupted it. So Rumil told _me_. There’s been no intercourse since, but for us eating Doriath beef.”

“The Feanorians have their hands in everything,” Tabitha says, musing on it, and Abe chuckles dryly.

“One less hand now,” he says. “Ah, but that’s cruel of me. The lad didn’t deserve it. Just as Jem didn’t deserve it—as Rumil himself didn’t deserve it. Damn Ulfang. Glad he hasn’t even a grave to be spat on.”

There is no grave for Jem either, of course.

Tabitha, stepping back through a painful maze of memories, can recall Maedhros Feanorian before his disappearance. He was the friendliest of his many brothers, so tall and strikingly handsome as to be noticeable by nearly every woman (and man) of Mithrim fort. Jem liked him without a shred of interest; Tabitha liked him, too, but was too humble and practical to really believe his flattery. Between the two of them, they had generally believed him to be a lost lamb in very fine sheep’s wool.

The sheep’s wool is shorn away now; the lamb lamed. Jem isn’t here to see him brought so low. Nonetheless, all his living people flock around him. Brothers and uncle and cousins and friends. Tabitha does not envy him his lot, but she marvels, even now, at his celebrity.

“I like your fruit trees,” Wachiwi says, though there are, of course, no fruit trees yet. Poor things would wither in December cold, if they were just beginning. “Caranthir…the one like a badger…he says he shall find blackberries to plant. Did he tell you so?”

“Caranthir spoke to you? Already?” Tabitha shakes her head. “I’m astonished. He is as prickly as one of his brambles.”

Wachiwi laughs. “Stout-heart and sure, I think. A badger. He helps Fingon with Maedhros.”

Tabitha liked Wachiwi at once, but is used to flavoring her judgment of strangers with a pinch of salt. Such is the lesson of provisional friendship with women like Nora, poor substitutes for the Jems of the world. Yet Wachiwi is honest and easy in her powers, mingling charm with trust. It seems there is nothing Wachiwi cannot do…befriend Caranthir, befriend Miles, offer good Fingon comfort and aid. Tabitha again adjusts her thoughts, her vision.

They speak of oranges and lemons until it is time to prepare for supper.

When the Feanorians arrived, they brought no hope with them. Feanor was like all the worst men Tabitha had known. He claimed to favor freedom and justice, but he brought down storms and warfare, as though freedom demanded price after price in blood. His sons, too, were hard—sharp, fierce, learning to be ruthless. More than that, tragedy followed them, swallowing them and their new home, without regard for those who had lived there in prior peace. Annatar’s victims were hardly cold in the ground, before more bodies were falling—this time, on account of so-called friends.

Tabitha was bitter; even loyal Abe spoke of moving on. More warfare, and the threat of it, prevented them. And then came Fingolfin.

Jem would have liked Fingolfin, and Wachiwi.

Jem of a year past would have been surprised by the news of her own death. The young are like that. Tabitha is not quite young any longer—she is forty-two—but for the first time in many months, the coming year is not a source of dread.

Even when it is too dark to work with her charcoal, she can see next summer’s garden clearly in her mind.


End file.
